A Little Late With Lilly Singh,????? ??????? ???????? ??? ?????? which premiered Monday on NBC and YouTube, played it safe.
In terms of content, most of it was familiar. Singh, known internationally as YouTube's Superwoman to over 15 million fans, wears a suit and reads a cheeky if polite monologue. Her show doesn't tinker with format like John Oliver's Last Week Tonightor play with space and media like Patriot Act, but Singh's act of revolution is to bare herself in every joke and frame.
As a bisexual woman of color (a phrase Singh herself says she's heard repeated so much it might as well be her name) and celebrity minted by social media, Singh's every move is momentous, even if the moves themselves aren't very edgy. But it's all there in the minutiae; in her colorful suits, her nods to Canada, her choice of guest (Mindy Kaling) that gives us the rare sight of two South Asian women side-by-side on NBC (rare but not unheard of, thanks in large part to Kaling herself). Alongside a cameo from Rainn Wilson and a smartly placed conversation about The Office, NBC quietly but inexorably stamps its new product.
You May Also Like
"I think by nature just my point of view hasn’t been seen that much on mainstream," Singh tells Mashable in a phone interview ahead of the premiere. "It’s very much my experiences, my point of view, it’s personal to me. That’s very special, because I think that’s how you build community. People are not just going to know Lilly the person who hosts the show, they’re going to knowLilly —like, what does she think, what does she like, what does she dislike, what’s she been through, what is her life like? They’re going to get to know me the same way my fans know me."
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Singh has opened up recently about branding herself less as Superwoman and more as Lilly — not that her identity is a secret, but that it is now the predominant part of who she is.
"[Superwoman] was a name that really empowered me growing up and I felt like a superhero and it helped me get through a lot of trials and tribulations, but as I’ve grown in my life I’ve found so much more beauty and power in embracing Lilly," she says.
Superwoman — a name with ringing connections to DC Comics but which came to Singh by way of Lil Mo ft. Fabolous — is a performer, a stage presence, a person who never gets tired or doesn't want to face a crowd. The divide between Superwoman and Lilly was evident in A Trip to Unicorn Island, the 2016 documentary that revealed Singh visibly burning out in real-time during her first tour.
"There’s beauty in the vulnerabilities of Lilly that I really want to highlight," Singh says. "I don’t need the Superwoman cape anymore because Lilly’s got a cape of her own."
Over the past several years, Singh started to see more of herself as juxtaposed with her YouTube identity, especially when she took a social media break in 2018.
"One of the things I learned was that self-care doesn’t have to be this once-a-year megavacation where you go to a resort and are gluttonous and get drunk every day — I mean, it can be," she laughs. "But self-care has to be kind of every day, especially for me."
Unlike other late night shows, which focus heavily on news headlines and timely segments that must be written, revised, and edited within a day, A Little Latewill be almost entirely pre-taped over three months and then rolled out incrementally. That's a change in late night, but makes total sense with Singh's established YouTube repertoire of evergreen, relatable viral videos.
"We’re telling stories on different platforms and we’re in the day and age where those platforms are kind of weaving together," she says. "So a big part of my show strategy is social media, is YouTube. It’s not an afterthought, it’s the thought."
Singh is also familiar with something almost no network late night show has: An established global audience. Her content has always been equally accessible to someone in middle America or halfway across the globe, and A Little Late's YouTube presence will ensure the same salience for her talk show.
"I don’t need the Superwoman cape anymore, because Lilly’s got a cape of her own. "
Though A Little Latestays close to formula with its premiere, it bears Singh's unmistakable stamp. The cold open — complete with feminist rap lyrics, a dig at the phrase "chai tea" (chailiterally meanstea), and effervescent background dancers — is exactly the type of fare her YouTube audience is used to while being entirely new to network television outside of Saturday Night Live.
"I’m allowed to poke fun at certain things that I’m allowed to do and other people probably can’t," Singh says — a premise that informs her lead-in Seth Meyers' "Jokes Seth Can't Tell." "That’s the best way I can put it. I just think you’ll see and hear stuff that you haven’t seen before."
With so much under her belt — viral fame, concert tours, music and dance videos, films, a book, and now late night — what's left for Lillyto accomplish?
"Literally there’s nothing left to do besides be in a movie with Dwayne Johnson and cuddle with Beyoncé," Singh jokes. "Beyond that, there’s nothing else."
But the truth is, there's no such thing as "nothing else" for this artist — she may not claim to be Superwoman, but Lilly's just getting started.
A Little Late With Lilly Singhairs weeknights at 1:35 a.m. on NBC.
Topics NBC Celebrities